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Category: Religion

This week marks the holiday of Chanukah, and the victory of the Maccabees over the Greek desecrators of the Temple. The ancient Jews, fighting for their homeland, were fierce warriors, who were not finally defeated until the Romans did so in 70AD with the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Here are some pictures that I took on our trip to Israel in 2007.

Walls and room, Masada, Israel

Evidence of another group of brave Jews, who committed suicide rather than surrender to the Romans.

View from the Old City of Jerusalem, Israel. This is MY Country.

This is the view from Masada, toward the Dead Sea. Dry, but absolutely beautiful.

The lower pool at Ein Gedi, oasis amid the parched wilderness.

The ancient city of Caesarea, on the Mediterranean Sea. The city of Herod the Great.

Women at the Wailing Wall, remnant of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. These are MY People.

Happy Chanukah to all.

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I am currently reading Walter Russell Mead’s book God and Gold, subtitled Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World. In this book, he discusses the role of religion as one of the forces in the making of the Western Enlightenment societies we have today. He says this about the Jews in today’s world:

Apart from the significance of Jewish experience to Jews, the survival of the Jews into modern times serves for billions of non-Jews as a kind of historical proof that the God of Abraham is powerful and real. God told Abraham that he would have descendants who would remember his name–and lo! there they are. That this unique people, returning almost miraculously against all probability to the land God promised Abraham would support his descendants, is a kind of bone in the throat of the world–a people and a state that can neither be spat out nor swallowed, unable to find rest at “home” or in exile–only further shows billions of Abrahamic believers just how powerful the narrative (or the God) remains after all these millennia. That world history remains convulsed by the struggles of the Jews to make a home, and that their ethical and military successes and failures reverberate to the ends of the earth, further reinforces the most powerful cultural force that human beings know.

I just love his phrase about the “bone in the throat of the world”, it just works. And the paragraph above supports what I have come to think of as the role of the Jewish People in the world.

The Jews are the Conscience of Humanity. You will know when the human race is well and truly doomed. When the last Jew is gone.

May the Jewish People live, and thrive, Forever. Amen.

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Here’s a link to a post by a friend of mine, over at Ratburger.org. I was impressed enough by his post that I have added a link to LifeSiteNews on my sidebar, so Pro-Life RushBabe49 followers can go directly there.

I am appalled by the actions of the Culture of Death (abortion supporters) who seem to run the big tech sites (Facebook, Google, Twitter), and systematically deny pro-lifers and conservatives a voice. My followers will know that I do not maintain a presence on Facebook or Twitter, and I am being reminded of why that has been a good decision daily.

Diversity strengthens us by bringing in different viewpoints. Adopting diverse viewpoints is “cultural appropriation.”

The Constitution is a living document. The Supreme Court’s “Roe v Wade” decision is carved in stone.

Raising the cost of cigarettes will discourage people from smoking. Raising the cost of employing workers will not discourage businesses from hiring.

Slavery – an economic system in which people can arbitrarily demand others’ time, labor, and produce – is bad. Social Justice – a philosophy that holds that “the oppressed” can arbitrarily demand others’ time, labor, and produce – is good.

Monopoly by corporations – which must satisfy their customers to survive – is bad. Monopoly by government – which can use deadly force to survive – is good.

There are no absolute truths. Absolutely.

And that is only the Original Post over at Ricochet.com. Behind a paywall, so here is a selection of the additional Member Comments.

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There are no s***hole countries. It’s cruel to send illegal aliens undocumented immigrants home because their countries are s***holes.

Government should get out of our bedrooms. Government must pay for our birth control.

Whites are evil, Western Civilization is evil, corporations are evil, police officers are evil, the right is evil. Conservatives are so judgmental.

A house a block from my apartment has two signs in the front window. One reads “Hate has No Home Here.” The other reads “Impeach Trump.”

And what is “Jerusalem Day“, you ask? It is a holiday in the State of Israel, celebrating the 51st anniversary of the Jewish Liberation of Jerusalem, uniting it as one city, the GREATEST City, in the State of Israel. And our President Donald Trump has given the Jewish people of Israel another great gift this year-the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, deciding to finally move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

In 2007, my husband and I went on a trip to Israel with Michael Medved and his family, where we toured most of the country. Aside from the very hot weather in July, the trip was wonderful, and very enlightening. Here are some of the pictures I took on that trip.

The Western (or Wailing) Wall, a remnant of the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.

A street in the Armenian Quarter of Old City Jerusalem. There are many of these back streets, not normally visited by tourists, that really have character.

The view from the Old City Wall. Can you see the cat?

The Jaffa Gate.

The view from our hotel room.

And here are a couple of pictures from other places we visited in Israel.

Painted Door, Safed, Israel

Just looking at this painted garage door in Safed makes me smile. It’s a Klezmer band.

Walls and room, Masada, Israel

We spent an afternoon walking through the ruins at Masada, where a band of Jewish fighters and their families committed suicide rather than be conquered by the Romans. All through our existence, over 4,000 years, we Jews have had to fight for our freedom-for our very existence.

This Jerusalem Day celebrates a huge victory for Jewish Freedom.

**But this victory will not be final until the Muslims are forced to relinquish their immoral control over the Temple Mount. This was a major error, and needs to be rectified now, and not later.

Little Charlie is a ten-month-old baby, who suffers from a rare genetic condition, Mitochondrial-DNA-Depletion Syndrome, that has robbed him of sight and other functions. It was his unfortunate plight to have been born in England, where the all-powerful National Health Service (?) has deemed that he must die. The Hospital where he has been most of his life, determined that his parents would not be permitted to remove him from the hospital, BUT the Hospital was given permission to remove his life support, and cause him to die.

Charlie’s doting parents raised over one million dollars to take him to America for an experimental treatment that might prolong his life. However, the Powerful Administrative State (NHS), the European Court of Human Rights, and the Pontifical Academy for Life (!) of the Roman Catholic Church, have deemed that his parents will not be allowed to remove their son from the Hospital, even so he may die at home.

This is the ultimate end of the “Single Payer” healthcare system. The all-powerful Government now owns your life, and your children’s lives. There have been many stories over the years of elderly patients in the UK being deprived of food and water when it was determined by the State that they were not worth maintaining. Parents can now not make decisions for themselves, or their children, and the state really does have the power of life and death over its subjects (not citizens if they do not own their own lives).

This story makes me so angry I could spit! I do not have children, but I weep for little Charlie, and for his parents.